


Quartet for the End of Time

by Prochytes



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Dollhouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-25
Updated: 2011-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-18 15:59:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forty-six people walked into a café. Both of them sat down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quartet for the End of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Dollhouse 1x13 “Epitaph One”. Originally posted on LJ in 2009.

Amy Clayton, American innocent abroad, laboured under what she liked to call a “Messiaen Complex”. She just dug everything old Olivier had composed, and going without her beloved bird-song made her antsy. Even in London, it was not always easy to get a regular fix, but the South Bank Centre usually obliged. It gave Amy a real bohemian _frisson_ to sit where she was now, in the café near the Purcell Room, flipping through the programme and day-dreaming about the delights ahead. Maybe this time there would even be a cute, unattached guy in the audience with whom she could talk Modes of Limited Transposition. Amy had never yet been that lucky, it was true. But miracles happen, don’t they?

 

The miracle was scheduled to happen in twenty-seven minutes, just as soon as the client could get away from his high-powered job in the City. Echo wondered whether DeWitt had charged him extra for shipping in an Active from LA. According to Paul, the decision to import was unrelated to the client’s _Daisy Miller_ fetish; it hardly took Topher to whip up your basic American ingénue. But the local Dollhouse had been destroyed a couple of years back, flooding when the River Thames had decided to change course one Christmas. That sort of thing happened a lot in London these days. No Smoke without fire, so to speak.

 

Echo winced, and reached reflexively for her paper cup. Amy adored lame puns. The Imprint was designed to generate them spontaneously. (“Messiaen Complex”, however, was Topher’s own handiwork. Like he needed another reason to die in pain.) Echo was Amy; Amy was not Echo. The headaches which this entailed got worse every day. Swallowing bad overpriced coffee in a café with a lunatic in a suit at the next table wasn’t helping any.

 

The crazy next door sprawled in his chair like a prone parenthesis, curving back in on himself only at the converse-clad toes and the serif of the quiff. The quality of attention which Amy would apply to serialism was in his case focussed on a row of individual milk portions lined up on the table in front of him. These he was methodically snapping and peeling open, with an expression of disconcerting rapture on his face. Disconcerting even to Echo, who was well-acquainted with all the varieties of bliss that money could buy.

 

There was no reason not to leave the guy to his lactic enthusiasms. But he might not be able to look after himself. And that was something Echo could never really ignore; an urge coming not, she suspected, from any of her Imprints, but from the primal clay of Caroline into which they had all been stamped. Original Sympathy, so to speak. She cleared her throat, and leaned over.

 

“Excuse me… why are you doing that?”

 

“Because these things,” the man in the trainers had not looked up, “are great. The perfect fusion of ends and means – and all to help you drink tea. A civilisation can develop hyperdrive and never come up with something as nifty as this. Trust me: I’ve seen it.” He sighed. “Imagine what the Universe could have avoided if there had only been cows on Sontar.”

 

“Right.” Definitelya Crazy, which meant he needed Putting at His Ease. Echo winced again, her vision blurring as Eleanor made a grab for the cerebral steering wheel. “I’d never thought of that. The design of those milk… things _is_ really clever.”

 

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Clever, certainly. But reallyclever? That’s not a description you should throw around lightly.”

 

“I stand corrected.” Eleanor squinted in his direction. “So, what’s reallyclever, then?”

 

The stranger puffed out his cheeks. “Robots that run off clockwork. Me, obviously. And multi-phase teleological brain-imprinting. That’s really clever.”  He finally looked up. His eyes made Echo wish he hadn’t. “And not even a little bit right. Are you planning to eat those custard creams?”

 

Echo found her voice. “I’m… I’m not hungry.”

 

“Your choice, but I think you should reconsider. You’re eating for thirty-six, after all. That’s how many of you there are, isn’t there? Thirty-six? I’ve been counting your different body languages since you sat down. So many languages – it must be like the U. N. in there. But with even more shouting.”

 

“I don’t know what you mean.” That was supposed to be Eleanor, who could lie without batting an eye-lid, but Echo lost her grip and it came out as Amy, who had never needed to. She could see the stranger’s expression clearly once again. The compassion there now was worse than any anger.

 

“Of course you do. ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees’ – have you ever heard that?”

 

“Uh-huh.” Penelope, who had majored in English Literature, supplied the quote. “It’s William Blake.”

 

“Exactamundo. But say it’s not just a fool and a wise man that are looking at the tree. Say that a cricketer is looking at it too. And a clown. And a dandy. And someone who plays the spoons. That little tree? It turns into a forest. A forest where it’s easy to lose your way.” He sipped some tea. “Am I warm?”

 

Echo swallowed. “Boiling. Who are you?”

 

He looked a little pained. “Thirty-six life-times at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, and you can’t even hazard a guess?”

 

Melanie (one of Echo’s first engagements – temporary tech support for a London friend of DeWitt’s called Yvonne) pursed her lips. “I see. So the stories about the Time Lord weren’t a myth.”

 

“Believe me; some days I wish they were.”

 

“You need to understand.” Echo lowered her voice. “The people who did this to me – the Dollhouse – will have to take their medicine soon enough. I’m making very sure of that. And I don’t need a Doctor to prescribe it.”

 

He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Understood.”

 

Echo’s brow wrinkled. “Well, that was easier than I expected.”

 

“I could save you, of course, but there’s no certainty that I would know where to stop. I don’t really trust the judgment of this particular me any more.” The man in the suit shrugged sadly. “He’ll be gone, soon. And as for the Fall of the House of Doll… well, I think that you are uniquely and severally qualified to bring that about yourself.”

 

“Maybe.” Echo bit her lip. “Can I ask you a question?”

 

“Go ahead.”

 

“How do you find your way? Through the forest? How do you cope with having been so many people?”

 

“I don’t. Not always, anyway. There’s my lava lamp flashback, for example.”

 

“Lava lamp flashback?”

 

“Lava lamp flashback. It’s because of who I was in the early Seventies. All it takes is a spot of wibbly wax, and I get this sudden urge to chop people in the neck and talk about cheese. Stilton, usually, although sometimes I make a wild stab at Wensleydale. It tends to go away if I hold my nose.” He leaned forward. “But that’s not very useful to you. Who are you today, if you don’t mind my asking?”

 

“Amy. Amy Clayton.”

 

“It’s good to meet you, Amy Clayton. What are you here to hear?”

 

“Messiaen. The _Quartet for the End of Time_.”

 

“Fascinating piece. Clarinet; violin; cello; piano. He was a POW when he composed it, of course; so he just used the instruments he had to hand. You can make music from the oddest combinations.”

 

Amy cocked her head on one side. “What’s your point?”

 

“The voices inside us don’t need to bicker or to vanish, however strange or contradictory they may be. Second fiddle is still an important part to play. Curiosity, conscience, clowning, righteous indignation… none of it loses its meaning for being part of something bigger.” He swigged the last of his tea, and stood up. “It’s great to be a soloist. But it’s fantastic to be an ensemble. Does that make sense?”

 

“A little.” Echo nodded, and held out her hand. “Thank you. For what it’s worth, you’ve made a difference.”

 

He grasped the hand warmly before releasing it. “Don’t say that. Just say I came and went like a summer cloud.”

 

The man in the suit reached up to tweak a button-hole that was not there; smiled ruefully for a moment; and walked away.

 

FINIS


End file.
